The high cost of attractive natural stone, marble, ceramic tile and genuine brick in recent years has turned designers, builders and home owners to the use of relatively inexpensive cast concrete products to replace products made essentially of genuine natural stone, marble, tile or brick.
However, unless the exposed surfaces of the cast concrete product faithfully replicate the shape and color of the original natural product, the cast concrete product would not be acceptable to the trade despite its price advantage.
This has led to numerous suggestions for forming and/or treating the exposed surface of the cast concrete product in an attempt to replicate the shape and color of the original natural product. Accordingly, the prior art is replete with suggestions for making the exposed surfaces of a cast concrete product look like an arrangement of bricks or stones or marble or ceramic tiles. See, for example, Lowe U.S. Pat. No. 5,372,676 and the earlier patents named and discussed in Lowe '676.